frank gibson

Most New Zealand jazz is like the Kiwi: endangered, pokes around in the dark away from public gaze and doesn't take flight.
This year however is shaping up to be a good one: albums by Wellingtonians Kevin Clark and Charmaine Ford are both worth serious attention, and now a long overdue new album from Auckland saxophonist Brian Smith....

Wellington pianist/composer/arranger Clark won best jazz album of the year in 2003 with Once Upon Song I Flew, and again two years later with The Sandbar Sessions.
Clark is something of a rarity in New Zealand jazz, he has an internationalism about his music and thinnks nothing of incoprorating what we might call "global elements"...

This is an interesting one: originally released under the same title but in a different cover two years ago from the band lead by gifted young New Zealand pianist Aron Ottignon, it has now undergone a considerable reworking.
If you were one of the few who picked up on the early -- and lesser -- version you could actually get into this one...

Even more New Zealand jazz. And different again.
Moon began her career in London more than a decade ago, moved to Australia (where as Caroline Lynn she won considerable media praise) and then came to New Zealand.
She is now married to saxophonist Roger Manins who appears here, along with pianist Kevin Field, guitarist-for-all-seasons Nigel...

Pianist/composer Meehan may well be a scholar (he teaches jazz history and composition at the New Zealand School of Music, and is working on a biography of pianist Mike Nock) but there is nothing academic in his approach here.
These angular, spacious compositions can be gutsy and deep or spry and flighty, and with bassist Nick Tipping (from...

Auckland jazz drummer Gibson has had a career that stretches back to the late 50s and he made his debut at age 8 on the stage at the Auckland Town Hall playing a duet with his drummer dad.
Since then he's played with everyone from Leo Sayer to Milt Jackson, and everywhere from Abbey Road and the Montreux Jazz Festival to some of the least...

Early in 2007 I would get calls from Frank Gibson, who some say is
arguably this country’s finest drummer. I would have thought that was beyond
argument myself.
Frank was asking what he could do, how he might capitalise on a
playing career that had taken him around the world, won him numerous awards and
the acclaim of musicians...

To my horror recently, I realised it had been almost a quarter of a century since I first interviewed the LA-based expat jazz pianist Alan Broadbent. It was 1984 and he was briefly back in Auckland to play a show and record an album with New Zealand’s in-house rhythm section of drummer Frank Gibson and bassist Andy Brown.
At the time I...

It's a fair bet the average jazz musician earns considerably less than Lenny Kravitz, and
probably works a darn sight harder. Sales of jazz albums are modest – in the US
10,000 was considered a good seller – and not too many jazz musicians find their
music used in Tom Cruise or J. Lo movies, let alone lucrative...

Just a quick acknowledgement here of this excellent double-disc collection of the three albums by Auckland's early-to-mid 80s jazz-rock outfit Space Case which formed around drummer Frank Gibson, saxophonist Brian Smith and keyboard player Murray McNabb.
To that core were added some fine players: bassist Bruce Lynch on their 81 debut album...

A long time between drinks, as they say: more than a decade I think since this Auckland jazz group released an album - and that seems tardy or just plain careless.
Their two previous outings - the self-titled debut in 94 and Eavesdropping in 97 - were very enjoyable affairs and in Barbara Cartwright they had a vocalist who was sultry and...

There has been quite a wave of New Zealand jazz in the past few months: reissues of albums by Parallel 37 and Space Case, the new album by Strange Fruit, the schoolboy band Grammaphone . . .
And now this very timely outing from a band helmed by guitarist Granville which arrives just after that extraordinary show by saxophonist Joe Lovano...

About 45 minutes into the conversation in a noisy café just around the corner from Neil Finn’s studio where he recorded his new album Music For Cocktail Lovers, Nathan Haines mentions casually that this is his seventh album.
Murray Thom -- prime mover behind Music For Cocktail Lover and on whose label the album appears -- seems...

When this album came out in the mid-Seventies jazz-rock fusion was at its peak and many otherwise sensible jazz musicians were wooed to the dark side. Few came out with any dignity (they just didn't get "rock") but Dr Tree from Auckland nailed it directly at a point where they were most comfortable; more jazz than rock because they...

Saxophonist Greg Heath has been in London for two decades now, so you’d have to have a long memory to recall him alongside Rick Bryant in the early 80s as a member of The Neighbours – a band with a revolving door membership anyway.
In ‘84 Heath picked up a grant to study at the New South Wales Conservatorium (where another...

Long experience and years of disappointment have taught me that very few among this country’s more established jazz musicians listen to much beyond their own doorstep or record collection. Standards rule, okay?
Perhaps if you’d been at it for as long as these musicians -- with the so few rewards, financial or by way of public...

There's an old joke: if you want to make a million dollars out of jazz, start with two million.
Jazz is notoriously unprofitable for its performers and record companies (a decent selling jazz album in the US sells about 3000 copies, the days of 50,000 are long gone) and yet people still do it. Why?
Simple, because they love this music...

Salon Kingsadore is another vehicle for Auckland guitarist Gianmarco Liguori whose earlier albums under his own name (with stellar guests) have appeared at Elsewhere, and who seems a hard man to pigeonhole.
Here for example he leads the instrumental group of keyboard player Billy Squire, bassist Hayden Sinclair and drummer Steven Tait (with...

Alongside Alan Broadbent, Mike Nock has been New Zealand's most successful and visible jazz export. Like composer/pianist and Grammy-magnet Broadbent, Nock was lost to the country early.
Both men won Downbeat scholarships to Berklee and were there before they were 21, Broadbent having played the clubs of Auckland and Nock by a rather more...

For some reason - perhaps because they
work in a loud profession - you expect drummers to shout. Few do, and
while Joe La Barbera may have started his career in the appropriately
named Thundering Herd led by Woody Herman, the quietly spoken drummer
doesn't shout about it, and doesn't bellow about his illustrious
career either.
For the...

In my experience, jazz people tend to live in the past. Radio programmes are more often about the greats of yesteryear than the living, jazz mags essay Ellington over ECM, and in any given year you get the clear message that record companies are more interested in reissues than recording new names.
Jazz musicians too contribute to this:...

When expat pianist/composer Mike Nock and Auckland-based drummer Frank Gibson got together in '87 to record these duets both men were at interesting points in their respective but separate careers, but neither had played together much.
Their sole recording together released prior to these sessions -- they had played on some Radio New Zealand...